Sunni Pavlovic is studio manager for Thatgamecompany, the Santa Monica, Calif.-based creator of hit games such as Flower and Journey. In that role, she is in charge of hiring and evaluating job candidates who want to work alongside studio visionary Jenova Chen.

The company has grown slowly in the past few years, and it now has 15 employees. And one reason for that slow growth is that the company is very careful about who it hires. Pavlovic and her team devise tests for programmers and think about not only what a person can do, but how they will fit with the rest of the team. Thatgamecompany can be choosy because it has such a reputation for making unusual, groundbreaking games that developers would love to make.

Pavlovic gave a talk at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco last week on hiring practices for game studios. We caught up with her afterward for an interview. Here’s an edited transcript of our conversation.

Above: Sunni Pavlovic, studio manager at Thatgamecompany.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

GamesBeat: You were talking about tips for hiring people and building a studio?

Sunni Pavlovic: Broadly speaking, it’s kind of advice about hiring, but really it’s about what we at Thatgamecompany did and why it worked for us. We’re coming from a very specific direction and goals. But outside those specifics, hopefully there are still approaches and thoughts about — my goal was to get people thinking that hiring is important. It’s crucial to building a studio and making games.

The people you hire will make your game. It sounds obvious, but even here at GDC where we’re here to talk and share information about how to do things better, we don’t talk about things like hiring. I’m very involved in hiring. That’s part of my contribution to the studio and to game development. Maybe we should shine a light on, hey, if we do hiring well, it helps our games and it helps our studio.

GamesBeat: Do you feel like your way of doing things is different from the way a lot of bigger game companies hire people?

Pavlovic: I can’t speak to that specifically, not having been on either side of things at bigger companies. But as much time and attention as we apply to developing games, I apply that to the hiring process as well.

One key thing I mentioned is, taking the time to get to know an individual and let them get to know you. Not for every single applicant, maybe, but when you’ve selected a handful of promising people, then making sure you put the time in to say, “This is what you can expect. This is the role. This is what we’re looking for. This is why it might be exciting for you, but also why it might not be a good fit.” Treating them as a human. Even if you have to reject someone, there are always benefits in doing it well. Word gets around.

When I was here on Tuesday, a conference associate was at the door for the speakers’ lounge. We’ve never met in person, but I saw her badge and knew that she’d applied to us. I was able to say, “Hey, I know you, you did that project,” and so on. We never got far toward hiring her, but I got to know her because I’d taken the time.

Above: Journey

Image Credit: Thatgamecompany

GamesBeat: Do you have a strategy for what happens if you make a bad hire?

Pavlovic: That has happened. I’ve been at thatgamecompany, and three people have departed the studio in that time. Historically, we’ve not been very good at letting people go. We’re not good at identifying problems and addressing them immediately. But we are good at giving it time to digest, so it’s clear enough.

One of the points I made was, if someone has to leave, it’s important to make it safe for them to leave. Make sure that you’re not going to give them a bad reference, that you’re not going to badmouth them. It shouldn’t be like, “We never want to talk to you again. Don’t come back.” Usually we all think an individual would be better off at another studio and would be happy and fulfilled. We want to support them.

Finding people to do great things here isn’t about being competitive. It’s about the greater industry. If you’re going to make contributions, you should be able to do that where you’re the most empowered and satisfied. We’ll tell them, “If you need help finding another job, if you need us to vouch for you, we’ll do it. If you’re afraid of making that step to leave, we’ll give you a cushion.”

The way that worked out with Asher Vollmer, he went on to make Threes. We hired him to work at Thatgamecompany because he’s obviously super talented. He had a lot to contribute. But he didn’t feel like he was reaching his peak at Thatgamecompany. That’s proven out. He had this idea for a game that was Threes. He approached us about it and we said, “Hey, if this is your passion, you need to do it. If you’re suppressing it to work on our project, you’re not going to be giving your all to it anyway.” He was really nervous, because he’d just come out of school and been at the studio for a year. He was relatively young. But it bears itself out. He made a great game and people loved it.

Above: Journey

Image Credit: Thatgamecompany

GamesBeat: How do you remain thoughtful about hiring without being too slow?

Pavlovic: I try to be very mindful of that. I know what it’s like to look for a job somewhere. It’s very stressful. There’s a lot of uncertainty. There’s a few things I try to approach with. When someone has gotten a little way into the process – we’ve had an initial phone call, a second phone call, the candidate is going somewhere – then we’ll say, “Hey, we like you. We have a process.” I outline each of the steps of what they can expect, so they’re not completely in the dark and wondering when they’ll hear back.

Communication is important. I want them to have the information they need to feel like they can take on this challenge. I also explain the reason why we have this very thorough process. We’re a different kind of studio and our requirements are different. We want to make sure people fit and we can keep them for the long term. Usually they get it and it works.

Being transparent about your process is one thing, being aware of limitations. I talk about how we give tasks and how that’s sometimes controversial in the interview process. I’ve heard some applicants say that studios have given them a lot of work that’s totally unreasonable compared to what the job requires. That’s not what it’s about. The reason why we have these tasks is because I need to verify that their skill set transfers over. Everyone has to wear multiple hats with us. I need to know that you can come in and hit the ground running, so I need to see a demonstration.

I try to outline things like, “I estimate this will take a day of actual work to put this test together.” We have some time for brainstorming and some time for polishing. I’m setting up that expectation so a candidate doesn’t go overboard, but also to get an assessment of what someone can do quick. We do quick prototypes at the studio. But as much as possible, if I can avoid giving a test — if someone has some code samples I can review, if you’re a full-time working professional, I don’t have the same expectations as I would have for a student.

As much time as a candidate’s putting in to perform a task, on our side we’re tailoring a task very specifically to the role. It really hones in on the skills we think someone will be using on a daily basis. It’s not wasted. We’re also creating something fun. It’s not a cookie-cutter task. We personalize it for an individual and for a role. If they think it’s fun and exciting, that’s the stuff they’ll be doing every day.

We’ll put little bits of humor in. I remember one of the tasks John wrote was for a systems engineering role. He was trying to test performance. He said, “Let’s say we’re making a mobile game in 2000, a fl0w MMO on a super old phone, and the device has only so much RAM. How do you get all these operations to happen?”

Above: Journey

Image Credit: Thatgamecompany

GamesBeat: Is hiring the right person the most important thing a studio needs to think about? What’s the impact of a hire that doesn’t work out?

Pavlovic: I wouldn’t go to the extreme of saying it’s the most important thing, but it’s certainly a very important decision. If you find someone who doesn’t fit and they’re not happy — this is pretty well-documented. If you have a toxic employee, if they’re disgruntled for any reason — if they don’t think they’re getting the amount of responsibility that they expected, or any number of other things — other people pick up on it. I’d say that the people we hire are pretty emotional, artistic people. They pick up quickly on bad vibes. It creates this downer environment in the studio that we don’t want. We have to hire people who are going to be excited and happy with the kind of crazy stuff we do.

Hohokum is … well, it’s weird. That’s really the only way to describe it.

It has objectives but little direction. It has 17 spaces for you to explore, but it’s up to you to discover them and figure out what you’re doing there. And it has a main character, but that thing you’re controlling is a kite-shaped eye with a tail that flies around doing … something. Various things, really. Look, it’s hard to put into words.

Out today for PlayStation 4 (reviewed version), PlayStation 3, and PlayStation Vita, Hohokum is happy to just sit back and let you figure out what it wants from you. Doing so will require creative thinking, patience, and just a hint of compulsive tendencies as you fly your weird, flagellate hero into absolutely everything you find to see if anything happens.

And whether you love or hate it depends on how you feel about this.

Above: You can zoom way out to get a better view of where you need to go — or just to look at all of the stuff that’s going on.

Image Credit: Evan Killham/GamesBeat

What you’ll like

It’s so pretty

Hohokum’s look comes courtesy of artist and designer Richard Hogg, who fills the game’s universe with bright colors and cute characters. Everything is charming and fun to look at, and every area has its own feel and tone.

Even more impressively, when you open a portal to another area, you get a little view through the gate to where it leads. And each realm’s style is so distinct, and the thumbnail views work so well, that the little peek is all you need to know where you’ll end up. And in a game with no map, this is extremely helpful.

Above: OK, look. Sometimes a tiny flagellate swims into a huge, round thing, and it doesn’t have to mean anything more than that.

Image Credit: Evan Killham/GamesBeat

It doesn’t pressure or rush you

You have goals in Hohokum, but it’s not inclined to tell you what they are or how to meet them. You learn by doing. And while this sounds daunting, it ends up giving the game an interesting and organic feel. In one densely populated area, your job is to seek out specific characters and transport them to a particular area. It’s a bit Where’s Waldo? But you get enough cues in the game to figure it out on your own.

Other tasks include filling a room with color by flying around it while avoiding the walls, carting a guy around so that he can harvest color discs to run his hat-making machine (no, really), and electrifying yourself to light lanterns.

I’ve just given you way more information than the game will about anything you’re expected to do, but it’s not like you have a time limit. This is a game about exploration, experimentation, and discovery, and you can take whatever you want from the experience.

It’s this weird combination of stuff that shouldn’t work but then totally does

All of this adds up to a game that certainly shares elements with stuff you’ve played before — developer thatgamecompany’s wind-sim Flower and the classic adventure game Myst come to mind — but it also provides a new experience that’s hard to categorize. It’s interesting, whatever it is, and I was always interested to see what it would do next.

It’s like Myst and Flower had a baby, then that baby grew up and met a pretty little screensaver, and then the two of them gave birth to Hohokum.

What you won’t like

It’s vague

Having no idea what you’re supposed to do next in a game is a problem. And when the thing you’re playing doesn’t tell you, the issue only gets worse. Hohokum, by design, doesn’t tell you a damned thing, and if you like a little more structure in your virtual worlds, this can get frustrating and lead to a lot of wandering around waiting for something to click.

And even once you discover something, it’s no guarantee that you’ll know what to do with the knowledge. What’s more likely to happen is that you’ll just keep fumbling around like that primitive human at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey before it realizes that those bones on the ground would make for pretty good murder sticks.

Hohokum is chill, and it wants you to also be chill. And being chill is cool, but sometimes it’s also good to know what you’re supposed to do in your electronic entertainment. It might lose players who don’t like feeling like they’re wandering around aimlessly or those who like to know where everything is because once again: This game has no map.

Conclusion

You should definitely try Hohokum if only to understand how weird and hard to describe it is. Some will appreciate its laid-back attitude and guidance allergy. It’s certainly a beautiful and unique title, and I enjoyed playing it, but you should bring along some extra patience just in case.

Score: 75/100

Hohokum is out today for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation Vita. The developer provided GamesBeat with a free PlayStation 4 download code for this review.

]]>0Hohokum's lack of structure may be brilliant or frustrating — it's your call (review)Watch Conan O’Brien spam Street Fighter II crotch punches on the world’s largest HD Jumbotronhttp://venturebeat.com/2014/04/10/watch-conan-obrien-spam-street-fighter-ii-crotch-punches-on-the-worlds-largest-hd-jumbotron/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/10/watch-conan-obrien-spam-street-fighter-ii-crotch-punches-on-the-worlds-largest-hd-jumbotron/#commentsThu, 10 Apr 2014 16:45:05 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1446856Conan is the envy of gamers around the world today after getting some time with the big screen in AT&T Stadium in Dallas.
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You might think you have a big TV, but it’s probably not as big as the one that Conan O’Brien used to play Madden NFL this week.

The late-night TV show host took his production team to Dallas and hooked up a PlayStation 4 to the 160 foot-by-72 foot arena screen in the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium. As part of the recurring “Clueless Gamer” bits for his TBS show Conan, O’Brien brought out his assistant to help him play Madden NFL 25, Flower, Need for Speed: Rivals, and Super Street Fighter II Turbo: HD Remix.

You can check out the segment for yourself in the video below:

Conan likely had one of the most expensive gaming setups of all time. The estimated cost of the Cowboys’ screen is more than $40 million. It’s also the largest 1080p screen in the world. The video board has four sides, which when combined, comprise more than 30 million light bulbs and 25,000 square feet of video display. In total, the screens use more than 10.5 million Mitsubishi LEDs.

It would take 4,920 52-inch flat-panel televisions to equal the total screen size of the arena’s Jumbotron (a technology which Sony first developed in the 1980s), which weighs 1.2 million pounds.

That’s one hell of a way to spam crotch punches with Ken in Street Fighter II.

Developer Sony Santa Monica is porting a handful of popular PlayStation 3 titles to the next-gen PlayStation 4, and if you own them on Vita or PlayStation 3, you already own them on the upcoming console.

Sony revealed that it is moving Flower, Flow, Sound Shapes, and Escape Plan to PlayStation 4. Previously, these were all downloadable PlayStation Network titles for the PS3 and Vita systems. With Cross-Buy, Sony’s program where you buy it once and own it on multiple devices, anyone who owns those games will get them automatically on the next-gen console. Microsoft currently has no similar program, and Nintendo famously continues to resell its older titles.

Flower and Sound Shapes will both debut alongside the PlayStation 4 on Nov. 15. Flow and Escape Plan will follow on Nov. 29. Some of the games will see minor improvements. For example, Flower will run in a full 1080p resolution at 60 frames per second.

This announcement is notable because the PlayStation 4 is not backward compatible with PlayStation 3 games. That includes the digital titles customers purchased and locked to their PSN accounts. Sony fans will have to hope that the company continues moving titles like these over if they want to play those older releases on their new console.

Flower and Flow are from indie developer Thatgamecompany. Flower puts players in control of the wind and has them using motion controls to blow flower petals around a world. Flow is a psychedelic, Pac-Man-style game where a tiny creature eats things around it to grow larger.

Sound Shapes is a musical platformer from Queasy Games. Players can create different tunes while playing through the levels. Escape Plan, from Fun Bits Interactive, is a black-and-white survival game where players must figure out how to break out of rooms filled with traps.

More information:

More information:

]]>0PlayStation 4 getting four PlayStation 3/Vita gems: Flower, Flow, Sound Shapes, and Escape PlanIf you could replay any this-gen game again for the first time … (staff feature)http://venturebeat.com/2013/07/11/if-you-could-replay-any-game-again-feature/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/07/11/if-you-could-replay-any-game-again-feature/#commentsThu, 11 Jul 2013 17:09:16 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=777851What if we could replay some of the greatest gaming experiences of our lives again, but for the first time? Which would they be, and why?
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As the current generation comes to a somewhat overdue close, you’re going to start seeing no small number of Top 100 lists and videos. But crowning a game with some arbitrary number in a list full of arbitrary numbers isn’t as interesting as playing, “What if?” What if we could replay some of the greatest gaming experiences of our lives again, but for the first time? Which would they be, and why?

The GamesBeat and VentureBeat staff pooled together their answers to those questions below. And don’t forget to tell us your own picks for a chance to win a free game!

Sebastian Haley: Valkyria Chronicles

While there are a multitude of great this-gen experiences I’d undergo experimental brain treatments to relive for the first time, it’s not just the game itself that colors my memory of it. When playing video games is your job, it can be easy to get burnt out, especially around the relentless holiday rush. So at the start of each year, after a brief hiatus from the torrent of overhyped, overrated triple-A blockbusters, I like to kick things off with a game that I want to play rather than one I have to.

One year, that game was Valkyria Chronicles, a cel-shaded tactical-role-playing game from Sega for the PlayStation 3 that revolves around tanks, their commanders, and a militia uprising. That description alone contains a lot of different elements that might not interest me, but I suppose that’s also partially why it won me over so completely. Valkyria Chronicles wasn’t just a good game. It was something fresh — a unique spin on a variety of genres all smoothly mashed together with a thrilling audio/visual presentation and some truly endearing characters.

This was Sega as it hasn’t been in a very, very long time. As an old-school adherent of all things 32X, Saturn, and Dreamcast, that also had a bonus nostalgic effect for me.

Unlike most games, even ones I would say I “liked” (followed by an inevitable list of everything they should have done better), I thoroughly enjoyed Valkyria Chronicles from beginning to end — save for a single mission near the finale. It filled my internal tank so that I could endure another year of disappointing, uninspired sequels and publishers too afraid to try something even half as innovative, and it taught me to be more willing to give the unknown a go once in a while.

Dan “Shoe” Hsu: BioShock

After I beat a prerelease version of the original BioShock for a review, I literally said to my friends, “I wish I could erase my memory of playing that because I’d love to experience it for the first time again.” I never figured out how to do that in a safe manner, but after the game hit retail, I played through it again anyways. Then yet again on hard mode. Then again later to show it off to a new girlfriend. I stopped after that — diminishing returns and all that — but each time I entered the underwater dystopia of BioShock’s Rapture, I continued to marvel at the care and detail that went into every aspect of the adventure. The twisty-turning story; the horrifying cast; the stunning, decaying city; and this amazing, self-contained fiction all created a fantastic — and frankly, unforgettable — world to visit (but you wouldn’t want to live there).

Dean Takahashi: Flower

I can recall the experience of playing Flower over and over again, sometimes alone or with my kids. It had no words, but you could feel the rush of emotion during the ending. The music and lighting changed and lifted your mood. It was a wonderful, novel, and unprecedented experience for me. It was one of those rare moments when I felt a game was a work of art.

Mike Minotti: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

I thought the first Uncharted was a huge achievement in gaming. Technologically, the digital acting and animation was on a whole other level than what I had seen before, but Uncharted 2 added an incredible dose of “epic” to the mix. I’ll never forget the adrenaline rush I felt as I jumped out of a falling building or discovered a lost city that was beautiful beyond my imagination. Oh, and that train level! That segment featured some of the greatest design in gaming history. Among Thieves really was an adventure, and I’d give a treasure worth hundreds to feel that sense of awe and wonder for the first time again.

Jacob Lopez: Wii Sports

Don’t laugh. Sure, I played several games this generation that were much, much better than Wii Sports. Still, nothing this generation beats that memory of buying a Wii at midnight, setting it up with a small group of friends, and swinging that Wii Remote for the first time. It was just cool to do and to imagine how many other people across the U.S. were doing that exact same thing at that very moment.

Rus McLaughlin: Bastion

I ran into Greg Kasavin on the floor of the 2011 Game Developers Conference while he was showing his little company’s little indie game, Bastion, and hunting for a publisher. He asked if I wanted to play it and held out a pair of headphones. I accepted the first offer, declined the second.

“No, really,” said Kasavin, “you need the headphones.”

I often tell people that Portal minus the audio isn’t really Portal, and Bastion without the headphones wouldn’t have been Bastion. Logan Cunningham’s twangy narration purred in my ears, adding layers to a game that already felt deep and decisive. He reacted to me in that demo, describing the motivation behind my actions. A few months later, when I played the full game, I started reacting to him, distrusting the motivations behind his words.

I’ve replayed Bastion a few times since, and I felt the same kind of anger, hope, determination, and forgiveness, but never with the purity of that first run. It’s one of experiences I judge other games by. Did it get in my skin like Bastion did? So far, few ever have.

“We plan to create innovative and deeply moving games that will inspire players, challenge convention, and push the boundaries of experiential and narrative interactive entertainment into new and unexpected areas,” said Nava.

The Santa Monica-based developer is currently hiring for its first project. According to Nava, the ideal candidate loves playing with Lego and the Angelina Jolie film Hackers.

Nava started at Thatgamecompany in 2008. He oversaw the visuals for both Flower and Journey.

Journey producer Kellee Santiago also left Thatgamecompany in March 2012. She now works on the Android console Ouya as the director of developer relations.

]]>1Journey’s art director starts his own studioAn interview with Jenova Chen: How Journey’s creator went bankrupt and won game of the yearhttp://venturebeat.com/2013/02/08/an-interview-with-jenova-chen-how-journeys-creator-went-bankrupt-and-won-game-of-the-year/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/02/08/an-interview-with-jenova-chen-how-journeys-creator-went-bankrupt-and-won-game-of-the-year/#commentsFri, 08 Feb 2013 18:00:11 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=619136The game became the bestselling PlayStation Network game of all time, but the team fragmented after it was done.
]]>Gaming execs:Join 180 select leaders from King, Glu, Rovio, Unity, Facebook, and more to plan your path to global domination in 2015. GamesBeat Summit is invite-only -- apply here. Ticket prices increase on April 3rd!

LAS VEGAS — Jenova Chen got a letter from a 15-year-old girl named Sophia last month. She said that she had played Journey with her father before he died from an illness, and the game had changed her life.

“That letter made it all worth it,” said Jenova Chen, the cofounder of Thatgamecompany, which won game of the year last night for Journey at the DICE Summit. It’s a PlayStation Network downloadable title that’s unique among video games for its poetic ambiance and lack of violence and dialogue.

Chen talked about Sophia’s letter (attached at the end of story) at the close of a talk on emotions in games.

Many participants, like Shuhei Yoshida, the head of Sony’s worldwide game studios, said that Chen’s talk was the highlight of the event and that it was more like an authentic confessional. Chen got a roar of applause when he was finished.

He and his team also got a roar of applause when they won “game of the year” at the game industry’s equivalent of the Oscars, the peer-voted DICE Awards.

Journey, like Thatgamecompany’s Flower before it, was a rarity in a game industry full of violent content. The game depicts a being’s lonely journey to the top of a mountain and the spiritual change that takes place along the way. I played the game with my three daughters several times all the way through — something they’ve never done with a PlayStation 3 game (except Flower). Journey has no weapons or words, but it is full of emotion.

Journey’s unique in a business that has every kind of shooter game, but very little content such as romantic comedies, which are so plentiful in movies. The game was all the more remarkable in that it was made in about three years with a team of 13 people; major game projects typically employee a hundred or more.

In his talk and a subsequent interview, Chen revealed that not only is Journey a metaphor for life and death, it is also an apt description of the struggle that Los Angeles-based Thatgamecompany went through. During the process of shipping Journey, Thatgamecompany went bankrupt and had to idle its staff. If the team had shipped on time, they wouldn’t have had a polished game. It was a tough decision to delay it.

Chen said that the team was supposed to ship a year earlier than it did, and it had run out of money. The staff got by on half salaries for six months. When they shipped to Sony in January, the coffers were dry. The company ran out of money, gave everyone three-week vacations, and no one expected to come back.

Chief exec Kellee Santiago (in red) and designer Robin Hunicke (in black) both left the company. Chen stayed on in a minimal capacity. Eight of the company’s 13 employees eventually moved on to do something else.

But the story has a happy ending. Journey went on to become the best-selling PlayStation Network game of all time. Chen doesn’t know for sure, but presumably it will earn royalties. And Mitch Lasky, a general partner at Benchmark Capital, was so moved when he played Journey that he started talks to invest. Thatgamecompany raised $5.5 million, and it committed itself to making cross-platform games that deliver human emotion to a wider audience.

Last night, Chen won the ultimate vindication for delaying the launch of Journey. The company won eight awards out of 11 nominations, including the Best Game Director award for Chen and Game of the Year. We talked to Chen in an interview, and here is an edited transcript of the talk.

GamesBeat: Maybe you want to start with the ending of your talk, with this letter from Sophia and what it made you feel when it arrived.

Jenova Chen: Over the course of last year, we’ve been getting this kind of mail pretty consistently. I was quite moved by it early on. I think there were more than five or six people who’ve lost their family members. They contacted us to talk about how they were reminded of their passed-away family members in the game. By traveling with them, they were able to settle with their grief. Most of the mail was just along the lines of “It’s a wonderful game! I just wanted to tell you how great it is.” But very so often there’s a message that touches me, and I have to write back. I have to share it with everyone who worked on Journey. This happened to be one of the most recent ones. It’s January, so I still remember it.

GamesBeat: Did you have a conversation with her then?

Chen: She’s 15. I wrote back to her. I think my e-mail was probably too theoretical, talking about how it’s not the worst thing, how life will be better. I didn’t hear back from her. I shared the e-mail with Sony, though. A lot of people were moved by it. They wanted to send her a poster or the collector’s edition of the game. I think that’s what happened.

GamesBeat: As you said, that’s exactly the kind of target that you had in mind for the emotional reaction to the game.

Chen: The mission statement of Thatgamecompany, after all these years, is that we want to create timeless interactive entertainment that makes positive changes to the human psyche. If our games can help people, that’s the best reward we can get. Hearing that girl saying the game helped make her life better is all the hard work paying off.

Continue Reading ...]]>1An interview with Jenova Chen: How Journey’s creator went bankrupt and won game of the yearGame industry pros confess their piles of shame!http://venturebeat.com/2012/10/12/game-industry-pros-confess-their-piles-of-shame/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/10/12/game-industry-pros-confess-their-piles-of-shame/#commentsFri, 12 Oct 2012 13:00:52 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=545371Everyone has a list of really important games they just haven't played, so we tricked some of the most influential people in the industry into revealing their piles of shame.
]]>Gaming execs:Join 180 select leaders from King, Glu, Rovio, Unity, Facebook, and more to plan your path to global domination in 2015. GamesBeat Summit is invite-only -- apply here. Ticket prices increase on April 3rd!

I have never, ever played a Fable game. I always intended to throw on one of Peter Molyneux’s fantasy epics and take it for a spin, and hey, I still do. Someday. Really.

But the simple fact is this: If you game, you’ve got a pile of shame … that list of titles you haven’t played yet but fully intend to. Someday. Really.

Nobody likes to admit it, but few of us have the money and time to play everything we’re interested in. In fact, the number of missed opportunities just grows and grows as shiny distractions (work, family, newer games that look really cool) come into the picture. So as we come out of the summer doldrums and into a very busy gaming season, we asked some of most influential names in the industry to publicly humiliate themselves by telling us what’s still on their piles of shame.

And they didn’t all answer. But here’s who did.

Cliff Blezinski: former design director, Epic Games (Gears of War)

I’ve yet to go back to Batman: Arkham City because I can’t find the darned disc in my cluttered setup.

Jenova Chen: cofounder, Thatgamecompany (Journey, Flower)

I haven’t played Deus Ex: Human Revolution after the first boss. It’s the game of the year for our lead engineer, John Edwards, so that means a lot. But I haven’t got time to go back to it yet.

Dan “Shoe” Hsu: editor-in-chief, GamesBeat

Mass Effect 2. I don’t understand what all that hub-bub was about the ending to the Mass Effect storyline. We’re still not even halfway through the trilogy, right? Right?

Sigh … yes, this is my big shame game. I’m not even finished with Mass Effect 2 yet. I know it’s something I need to get through — Mass Effect is a major franchise in gaming, after all — but I just can’t seem to find the time. Actually, that’s not true. I somehow scraped together 188 hours for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

I honestly don’t know what it is about this series. I loved the first game, but it took me over a year and a half to beat it because I was constantly leaving it, then coming back, and then leaving it again. For all of 2012, ME2’s been sitting next to my TV, beaming subliminal messages to my brain: “Play me … play me. …” But it hasn’t worked. Now that Borderlands 2 is here, and all the other fall games are arriving soon, I’m afraid part two of this sci-fi trilogy will just have to wait a bit longer.

Morgan Webb: co-host, X-Play

Spec Ops: The Line. Everyone tells me it’s really good. Everyone tells me about the crazy tough choices you have to make. And I even bought it. It is still in the plastic and will likely remain so until about January. It’s not a very large pile. I try really hard to keep up with things. And seriously, Shoe needs to play Mass Effect.

Working on Halo is a pretty involved process. There’s the work, of course – story, universe building, endless meetings, travel … most developers know the score there. But you compound that work with home life, raising an angry 3-year-old, taking out the trash, fixing the sewer, making dinner – there just aren’t that many hours in the day. And so when I do play games in my downtime, they tend to be Halo. Take-home tests, matchmaking, just a ton of Halo stuff. So my pile of shame is almost limitless. And to prove that point, my main shameful miss is a couple of years old, and I still haven’t gotten around to it properly. It’s Red Dead Redemption.

Hardly unusual, but when I did finally put it in my drive, I immediately knew this was a place I wanted to inhabit. And I got as far as the first horse race, couldn’t beat Bonnie around her ranch, and that’s where I left it. Right back to Halo stuff. I also have a miserably small completion ratio of Forza, and in fact I have not unlocked the Halo Warthog that’s squirreled away in there. The least dusty, still-shrinkwrapped item on that pile is Borderlands 2.

I still haven’t seen the new Batman, either, and I only saw Cabin in the Woods because it was on my plane. I genuinely feel actual shame because part of my job is to understand why other games are cool and expose myself to new experiences. I feel like I should really just take a couple of months off to reengage and immerse myself in what’s new and what’s awesome.

Continue Reading ...]]>0Game industry pros confess their piles of shame!The gorgeous Journey to get an art book in September (gallery)http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/27/journey-to-get-art-book-september/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/27/journey-to-get-art-book-september/#commentsTue, 28 Aug 2012 03:30:27 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=519956Journey is so beautiful that Sony and developer Thatgamecompany decided to make a book about its art.
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Some games are so pretty that they need to make a book about it. Such is the case with Thatgamecompany’s exploration-focused adventure title Journey.

Sony is collaborating with the developer to commemorate Journey’s evocative visual style in a new art book that will release in September. The game’s original art director, Matt Nava, is writing and designing what the team has dubbed The Art of Journey.

Nava littered the tome with pre-production character design, early location sketches, and many works of fan art produced by people who love the game. Additionally, Sony is working with a company call Daqri to produce an augmented reality companion app for the book.

Fans can point their tablets at certain pages to see fully rendered 3D manifestations of in-game models using Darqi’s 4D platform.

Beginning August 28, Sony will begin selling Journey Collector’s Edition, which will collect all three of Thatgamecompany’s titles on a Blu-ray disc. This is the first time that Flow, Flower, or Journey will ever be available on a piece of physical media. Journey Collector’s Edition will be available at retail for $29.99.

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]]>0The gorgeous Journey to get an art book in September (gallery)“Games are not good enough for adults,” says Journey designer Jenova Chenhttp://venturebeat.com/2012/05/20/games-not-good-enough-for-adults-journey-designer-jenova-chen/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/20/games-not-good-enough-for-adults-journey-designer-jenova-chen/#commentsSun, 20 May 2012 23:45:29 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=457958Journey director and Thatgamecompany co-founder Jenova Chen thinks that most games lack the mature themes and depth required to appeal to adults.
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Thatgamecompany co-founder (and creator of PlayStation 3 adventure Journey) Jenova Chen thinks that most games lack the mature themes and depth required to appeal to adults.

“My biggest complaint for computer games so far is they are not good enough for adults,” Chen told Gamasutra in a recent interview. “For adults to enjoy something, they need to have intellectual stimulation, something that’s related to real life. Playing poker teaches you how to deceive people, and that’s relevant to real life. A headshot with a sniper rifle is not relevant to real life. Games have to be relevant intellectually.”

Gamers and critics alike commended Journey for its ability to stir emotions without relying on traditional storytelling tropes like dialogue. GamesBeat’s review of the PlayStation 3 exclusive called the title, “…an archetypal story of the struggle we go through in life as we tackle any tough mission.” Certainly sounds more relevant to an adult than getting a triple kill with a rocket launcher.

“Can games make you and another human experience an emotion that’s deep enough to touch adults? I’m working on all of that. Making emotional games and making them intellectually relevant, making games where people can connect and come together,” said Chen, who had previously stated that PlayStation Network players are more likely to be interested in artistic games.

Thatgamecompany’s previous titles, Flower and Flow, were also unique, artistic takes on simple game mechanics. The studio is currently working on an unannounced new project.

]]>1“Games are not good enough for adults,” says Journey designer Jenova ChenJourney team loses one of its co-foundershttp://venturebeat.com/2012/03/29/journey-team-loses-one-of-its-co-founders/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/29/journey-team-loses-one-of-its-co-founders/#commentsThu, 29 Mar 2012 16:42:49 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=409759Gaming execs: Join 180 select leaders from King, Glu, Rovio, Unity, Facebook, and more to plan your path to global domination in 2015. GamesBeat Summit is invite-only -- apply here. Ticket prices increase on April 3rd! Kellee Santiago, co-founder of Journey developer Thatgamecompany, has decided to leave the Santa Monica, Calif.-based game studio that she started with Jenova Chen, according to […]
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Kellee Santiago, co-founder of Journey developer Thatgamecompany, has decided to leave the Santa Monica, Calif.-based game studio that she started with Jenova Chen, according to Gamasutra.

The split is described as an amicable one, and Santiago said it was time for her to move on. That brings to an end one of the most creative and successful collaborations on the artistic side of video games. Journey, the team’s latest effort, went on sale as a downloadable title on the PlayStation Network March 13. The title has already gotten accolades from game critics, including a high rating of 90/100 from GamesBeat. In the non-violent game, the player goes on a solitary journey across the desert to a distant mountain. The visual effects of the wind and sand are beautiful, and the story is told without any words. Journey has been the fastest-selling game in the history of the PSN.

“After doing these three games, I think it was a really great opportunity for all of us to look at what we’ve learned and what I’ve taken from that experience, and go forth and take it into new arenas,” Santiago said.

Gamasutra said other members of the small team may leave as well. Chen has been the creative visionary at the company, and Santiago has helped execute those visions as president. Santiago became famous for a TEDx talk on how video games can be considered art, putting her at odds with move critic Roger Ebert, who didn’t play games but said they can “never be art.” We caught up with Santaigo recently at the Game Developers Conference, where she noted that the experience of making Journey was a tough one.

“So much of my work at Thatgamecompany was really supporting Jenova’s visions for the types of games he wanted to make, and I felt like I have done everything I needed to do there, and that he’s in a great place now to go on and continue with some of the other people at Thatgamecompany, to take that to a whole new height,” Santiago told Gamasutra.

[Update: Robin Hunicke, game designer and another key member of the Journey team, also announced she was leaving to join San Francisco-based Tiny Speck, which makes the online game Glitch].

Gamasutra says a new project has begun at Thatgamecompany. Previous hits include Flow and Flower.

]]>0Journey team loses one of its co-foundersHow Thatgamecompany designed its new game, Journeyhttp://venturebeat.com/2012/03/09/kellee-santiago-describes-the-making-of-thatgamecompanys-journey/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/09/kellee-santiago-describes-the-making-of-thatgamecompanys-journey/#commentsFri, 09 Mar 2012 17:30:30 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=400606Gaming execs: Join 180 select leaders from King, Glu, Rovio, Unity, Facebook, and more to plan your path to global domination in 2015. GamesBeat Summit is invite-only -- apply here. Ticket prices increase on April 3rd! Kellee Santiago is co-founder and president of Thatgamecompany, the Santa Monica, Calif.-based game studio she started with Jenova Chen. After three years of work, the […]
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Kellee Santiago is co-founder and president of Thatgamecompany, the Santa Monica, Calif.-based game studio she started with Jenova Chen. After three years of work, the company’s Journey game on the PlayStation 3 will go on sale as a downloadable title on the PlayStation Network on March 13. The game has already gotten accolades from game critics, including a high rating of 90/100 from GamesBeat. In the game, the player goes on a solitary journey across the desert to a distant mountain. The visual effects of the wind and sand are beautiful, and the story is told without any words.

Thatgamecompany’s work has drawn attention because it has avoided violence in games and is steering into emotionally engaging content that very few others in the industry are doing. In doing so, it has become one of the models for innovation among independent game studios.

Santiago gave a TEDx talk in 2010 on how video games can be considered art and was challenged on that assertion by critic Roger Ebert, who said that video games can “never be art.” But judging by the outstanding reviews that Journey is getting, Ebert may have to eat those words.

We caught up with Santiago at the Game Developers Conference this week. Here is a transcript of our talk.

GamesBeat: How is your GDC this year?

Kellee Santiago: I helped organize the Indie Games Summit this year, it’s been really great so far. I’ve been happy about that.

Gamesbeat: That seems like a lot of work, a lot of games coming in.

KS: Yeah. I was at TED Active last week too. When the first session started yesterday I thought, “I’m at another conference.” [laughs] “Oh, God.”

GB: I played the game all the way through, and the second time through with my 15-year-old daughter. She remembered Flower.

KS: Oh, wow! Cool.

GB: And my joke was, you know, you guys take too long to make these things. [laughter] Three years to make this one?

KS: Yeah, it’s definitely our biggest endeavor to date. We got up to about 13 people, compared to Flower, which was about seven people over two years.

GB: And it was about three hours, is that the gameplay…?

KS: It kind of depends on what sort of player you are, but I think if you go pretty much straight through the experience, it’s two to three hours.

GB: Is that shorter than Flower? I think I remembered Flower being a little longer.

KS: No, that’s what’s interesting. It depends. I know just anecdotally, people who have e-mailed us and such have said their flower experience was around three to five hours. Whereas I can play through it in 45 minutes. Journey takes me usually about 90 minutes, being the super pro player because I know how to go through it.

GB: So what are you guys thinking of with some of the design, when you target a short amount of time that way? Compared to shooting for a five or ten-hour experience…

KS: Well, there’s a couple of things that factor into the length of play. One is, we do want players to have the ability to go through the entire emotional arc in one sitting, so you can really absorb that whole experience in one sitting if you want to. But also, our goal is really to…

GB: Is that like a trip to the movies?

KS: Kind of. Certainly we borrow a lot from Holllywood film structure. Jenova has spoken in the past about the three-act structure that he tries to implement, and the overall emotional arc as well, of Flower and Journey. But also, we’re really searching for an experience that feels right. It’s such an intangible thing, but the flow of it feels appropriate, the contrast and comparison of the emotions from level to level have a good beat. In that way, it’s sort of evaluating it at the level I would compare to an editor, a book editor or a movie editor, where there’s certainly some ideas in mind about possibly the length of the experience, but really what you’re looking for is almost an intuitive, gut feeling to it. That the beats and the movement from beat to beat make sense. That’s our primary motivating factor. As opposed to just a somewhat arbitrary number like five hours, six hours. For me personally, the first Portal game is a great example of that, where it was maybe a two to three-hour experience, but there was nothing additional. In general, it doesn’t feel like there was anything missing, and there was no excess.

Continue Reading ...]]>0How Thatgamecompany designed its new game, JourneyJourney will take you into the cloudy heights of video game artistry (review)http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/03/review-journey-will-take-you-into-cloudy-heights-of-video-games/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/03/review-journey-will-take-you-into-cloudy-heights-of-video-games/#commentsSat, 03 Mar 2012 11:30:16 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=396057Gaming execs: Join 180 select leaders from King, Glu, Rovio, Unity, Facebook, and more to plan your path to global domination in 2015. GamesBeat Summit is invite-only -- apply here. Ticket prices increase on April 3rd! Your first words when you start playing Journey, the new PlayStation Network game from Thatgamecompany, will be something like “Wow,” or “Cool!” From the moment […]
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Your first words when you start playing Journey, the new PlayStation Network game from Thatgamecompany, will be something like “Wow,” or “Cool!” From the moment you start walking through the sand, you know you’re in for a different kind of experience. The sand is mesmerizing, and since there is nothing else to do but walk through it, it captures your full attention.

Journey is the kind of game that has no violence or blood. The combined experience of Journey’s graphics, haunting music, and wordless story is one of the best arguments for classifying video games as a fine art. It is the kind of game that should reach a true mass market and generate an economic bonanza for anyone associated with it.

With Flower, the most beautiful element in the game was the realistically rendered grass that swayed with the wind and gave shape to something that was invisible. In Flower, you as the player were the wind in the dream of a dilapidated flower in the midst of a decaying urban jungle. The wind blew the grass and gave life to dead regions of the world and replaced them with colorful flowers, a process that was as beautiful as when the Wizard of Oz moved from black-and-white images to color as Dorothy arrived in land of the Munchkins.

WHAT YOU’LL LIKE

Incredible visuals

With Journey, the incredible visuals are presented to you right at the outset. You as the player are a robed character, completely masked in a red robe, not entirely human and neither male nor female in your form. In the distance is a mountain. It is split in two at its peak with a beam of light coming out of its middle crevice. It doesn’t seem all that far away, but that is the mirage.

Before you is a vast desert. The sand shimmers and shifts as the wind blows over it. You walk up a dune and leave a ripple of a realistically simulated sand in a wake behind you. You hear the sound of the sand as you stomp through it, and parts of it glitter like gold when the sun shines directly on it. The golden and fluid sand, like the grass in Flower, is the visual star of the show.

The controls are intuitive. You move forward by pushing the left analog stick on the controller and look around with the right stick. There is no time limit. You can proceed at your own pace, discovering how to move by surfing down a sand dune. Hit one button, and you will jump into the air. Hit another, and you will let out a kind of song, spitting out some odd symbols onto the screen as you do.

This is a game that can be played by anybody. It is utterly accessible. It has grand landscapes with fantastic views. As you walk forward, you will find buried buildings or enclosures that house flying ribbons. If you sing to them, they come to life and flow through the air. Little flying carpets give you energy, and you discover that you can use that energy to fly. When the energy runs out, you have to walk again.

So the basic mechanic of the game is to walk through the sand, find the ribbons, gain some energy, and use that to find your next puzzle or reward. The great thing about the game is it is efficient and well designed. The graphics work for the most part, and they don’t get in your way. If you want to speed through the game, you can. If you want to tarry, you can pause as you search the environment.

The story

The story of Journey is one big metaphor. Since there is no dialogue, you have no knowledge of the places you walk through. The ancient ruins you find are a kind of mystery. You unravel some of that mystery as you uncover hieroglyphics on the walls, but that doesn’t seem to tell you much. At the end of each level, you are rewarded with the smiling approval of nun-like or angel-like robed characters. They appear to applaud your efforts and they open the path for you to forge ahead.

But the tale of Journey isn’t just about a walk in the sand. You run into obstacles. There are twists. The environment changes, and sometimes it seems so menacing that you won’t want to go ahead. Howling winds may make you want to stop. The path is a straight one, and you will wonder along the way about what your purpose is. It seems to be a lot like real life in that way: You don’t get an instruction manual for living. You get started moving, and you rarely stop. You overcome obstacles. Everything in Journey seems iconic, mysterious, and spiritual. But you can apply your own narrative on top of it. The beautiful orchestral music sets your mood at various points to be either happy, neutral, or somber.

The music makes your experience into an emotional one. A full orchestra with a chanting singer can lift you up. But as threats come near you, the music gets more menacing. A lone cello plays as you near the final steps of your Journey.

The weather also affects your state of mind. When the first drops of snow land on you, it’s a cool feeling. But when a snowstorm blows in your face, you’ll feel cold on the inside. And when you wander through the darkness, you feel both awe and fear.

How many video game stories can you remember that take you on an emotional path like this game does? It seems game developers rarely remember to stick to the fundamentals of a story arc in their games. Journey’s story seems like it has been stripped of all of the clutter and honed down to the fundamentals. Indeed, the developers of Journey seem to have thrown a lot of things out and come up with a minimalist story and game design. They took out everything except the most valuable part: your feelings as you play the game.

Multiplayer

Journey will be available for multiplayer play as well. Rather than lace up for a combat session, you can get together in the same game world with multiple people and explore it together, talking via headsets. You can discover the hidden history of the ancient world in a unique cooperative play mode with other people who share your experience. You can get through some of the levels faster with multiple people, but that’s not really the point. With a short game, the point of multiplayer is really to make you linger and stay longer in the experience.

[Update: I’ve been able to play through yet another time with multiple companions along the way. They come and go like spirits, so you don’t really know if they’re non-player characters or real people. You don’t sign up to get a multiplayer partner. The others just appear in your game. All you can do to communicate is sing to each other. But the emotion of the game changes when someone else arrives. You’re delighted that you aren’t on your journey alone. And for the most part, the other players help you play better. But at one juncture, the other player did something that prevented me from moving up to grab a resource. That was a little frustrating. But it didn’t affect my ability to move forward. At the end of the multiplayer session, the game tells you the names (or PlayStation Network handles) of the companions you met along the way.]

WHAT YOU WON’T LIKE

Time management problem

I have a bone to pick with Thatgamecompany. They work too slow. Come on! Such lazy developers. They came out with Flower, one of the most startling and original video games ever made — with a story as beautiful as Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax (the book, not the movie) — and then they sit around and do nothing for three years.

Now they’ve launched Journey. It’s a short three-hour experience available for $14.99 on the PlayStation Network. It’s another spectacularly innovative game. And now they’re probably going to sit on their butts for another three years. Speed it up, will ya! You guys are doing the most original work in gaming on any platform. We can’t wait that long for your next game.

I jest, of course. Journey is an incredible video game, produced by a small team with about 11 developers — led by Kellee Santiago, Jenova Chen (pictured) Robin Hunicke and others.

And yes, this is kind of a long way of saying that there isn’t much to dislike about Journey. The game isn’t for those among us who have been trained by years of experience to kill, maim, and tackle. If that’s what you want to do in video games, then you probably don’t have the patience for Journey. It’s also likely to be somewhat disappointing for those who simply want to know what is at the end of the Journey. The game is for people who want to explore and experience interesting things along the way.

The team ran with this idea, and they probably pursued it to a fault. There aren’t a lot of things you can do in Journey. It is a very linear experience,

where you go from one place to another in a pretty straight line. After all, you can always seen the mountain in the distance, so you always know which way to go. Even if you wanted to linger, there isn’t a lot for you to interact with. It almost seems as if the creators of Journey forgot that they could vary the story and leave you in more of an open world where you simply wander around. You can do that now, but it doesn’t seem like you can find much to do.

Journey’s creators at Thatgamecompany previously created Flow, Flower, and now Journey. The company was founded in 2006 by graduates of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. Flow debuted in 2007 on the PlayStation Network, and Flower debuted in 2009.

The studio’s game designers view the lack of violence as “de-empowering” the player. You feel helpless and tiny and all alone. The world makes you feel a sense of awe, wonder, and fear. If there is anything wrong with the game, it would have to be that the experience is kind of short. You can breeze right through it in about three hours. You’ll probably want to play it again, and it is a great game to play through with children of any age.

CONCLUSION

Journey is an archetypal story of the struggle we go through in life as we tackle any tough mission. You start out fresh, and your goal is formidable, but it’s not so far away. Then you find there are twists and turns, and the journey takes its toll on you. The game evokes an incredible amount of emotion from you, and it is the kind of game that its fans will play over and over. To employ a trite but true maxim, the Journey is the reward. The game is an amazing accomplishment in an industry that is focused on creating blockbusters with a $50 million budget. If it has a flaw, it is that the game is too short. But at least the developers at Thatgamecompany leave you wanting more.

Score: 90/100

Journey will be released on March 13, 2012, exclusively for the PlayStation 3 via download on the PlayStation Network. A downloadable code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.

]]>0Journey will take you into the cloudy heights of video game artistry (review)Traditional game veterans adapt to a world with CityVille and Angry Birdshttp://venturebeat.com/2011/02/09/traditional-game-veterans-adapt-to-a-world-with-cityville-and-angry-birds/
http://venturebeat.com/2011/02/09/traditional-game-veterans-adapt-to-a-world-with-cityville-and-angry-birds/#commentsThu, 10 Feb 2011 03:51:53 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=242305There’s a specter hanging over the traditional video game industry, and you can see it in the image above. Social game companies such as Zynga and mobile games on the iPhone are grabbing players by the tens of millions. The traditional video game industry isn’t growing like it once was. But the star designers of […]
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There’s a specter hanging over the traditional video game industry, and you can see it in the image above. Social game companies such as Zynga and mobile games on the iPhone are grabbing players by the tens of millions. The traditional video game industry isn’t growing like it once was.

But the star designers of traditional games aren’t running scared. In a panel at the Dice Summit, which gathers 700 of the game industry’s elite in Las Vegas from today through Friday, game industry veterans said that they’re used to the constant chaos, change, and adaptation that has to happen in the industry. Companies such as Zynga, maker of CityVille, and Rovio, maker of Angry Birds, have disrupted the game industry and the industry veterans think that’s a good thing.

The game veterans pictured above said they continue to work on hardcore console and PC games that they always have. But they’re playing games from the new guys. As a group, these game designers are looking to learn what they can from social and mobile.

Mike Morhaime (pictured right), head of Blizzard Entertainment, said he plays Words With Friends, a Scrabble-like word game on the iPhone, so that he can connect with old friends.

Greg Zeschuk (far right), co-founder of Electronic Arts’ BioWare division, said he pulled someone into his office to show off CityVille on Facebook. “Come take a look at the future of games,” he said. He said game designers can now reach so many users so fast with games that are accessible and easy to play; CityVille grew to 100 million users in less than two months on Facebook.

“We have never had a chance to reach so many people so fast with something so easy to play,” Zeschuk said.

Bruce Shelley, co-founder of the now-defunct Ensemble Studios and maker of Age of Empires, was so enthralled with Zynga’s FrontierVille (made by his friend and game veteran Brian Reynolds) that he decided to start work on Facebook games himself.

“This [game] had engagement,” said Shelley (pictured right). “It was a real game. It meant that game design had been brought to a new space where it had never reached before.”

Shelley is now a contractor working on a game design project with Zynga. He is offering tips to Zynga’s neophyte game makers, who in turn are offering him tips about how to operate in the fast game design cycles that Zynga follows.

Shelley co-founded his game studio in 1995, a great time to get an independent game studio together to make high-end PC or console games.

“I thought you would never be able to do that again,” he said. “But today, there has never been a better time to start a game studio. I have this vision of a dam breaking and all of this opportunity rushing downhill.”

Now at Zynga, Shelley said it is remarkable how fast the company can move. “I’m just asked to make the games more fun,” he said.

Mark Cerny (pictured right), a freelance game designer who has worked on many blockbuster games with Sony, said, “Bruce will be able to create a game faster than it will take us to get a lawyer assigned to create a contract.”

Ray Muzyka, co-founder of BioWare, said that the game industry feels like it is in the middle of an S-shaped curve, meaning it’s about to see another huge wave of growth.

“A lot of existing players are going to have to adapt in order to thrive and survive,” he said. “New players are going to come into this market and surprise the heck out of us.” However, Muzyka also said it was still refreshing to see outstanding hardcore games surface, such as RockStar Games’ Red Dead Redemption, an epic Western game that has sold 8 million units on the consoles.

Cerny said he was happy to see original indie games such as Flower, a downloadable game on the PlayStation 3 that let gamers play the wind in the dream of a flower in the middle of a dilapidated city. Games like that one aren’t huge money makers, but they earn enough to make their money back and more.

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